29-07-2003 11:00 am The third UNESCO meeting of international experts* on the safeguarding of Iraqi cultural heritage will be held in Tokyo on August 1, organized jointly by UNESCO and the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan.

Takeo Kawamura, Japan’s Senior Vice-Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and UNESCO Director–General Koïchiro Matsuura will open the meeting, which will focus on short and long-term action to preserve the Baghdad Museum. The key points of discussion will be: equipping and opening laboratories in the museum, starting restoration of artefacts seriously damaged, and launching training programmes for museum employees.

The experts will also consider broader measures to protect Iraqi cultural heritage, discussing the assessments provided by the two UNESCO experts’ missions to Iraq. It will seek to determine a timeframe for short, medium and long-term priorities as well as an international coordination mechanism to implement them.

The meeting will pursue the work carried out during the two previous sessions which took place in Paris (17 April 2003) and in London (jointly organized with the British Museum on April 29).

The meeting is due to adopt recommendations which will be presented in a press conference (6.30 p.m., Tokyo International Exchange Centre, Media Hall, 2-79 Aomi, Koto-ku).

* Experts scheduled to attend the Tokyo meeting are: David Grattan (Canada), Manager for Conservation Processes and Materials of the Canadian Conservation Institute, Jean-Marie Arnoult (France), General Inspector of Libraries and Archives; Margarete Van Ess (Germany) Director, German missions to Uruk German Archaeological Institute, Berlin; Muayyad Said Al Damerji (Iraq) Senior Adviser for Cultural Heritage Iraqi Ministry of Culture; Khalil Jaber (Iraq), Director-General of Antiquities; Ms Nawala Mutawalli (Iraq), Director of Iraqi Museum, Baghdad; Selma Al Radi (Iraq) University of New York; Giuseppe Proietti (Italy) Head of Archaeology of the Ministry of Culture of Italy; Roberto Parapetti (Italy) Director, Italian-Iraqi Centre for the Restoration of Monuments in Baghdad; Shigeo Aoki (Japan), Director, Department of Restoration Techniques, the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties; Katsihiko Onuma (Japan) Institute for Cultural Studies of Ancient Iraq, Kokushikan University; Hayao Kawai (Japan) Commissioner for Cultural Affairs; Masaaki Sawada (Japan), Tsukuba University; Kazuo Nukazawa (Japan) Director-General of Cultural Affairs Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Hiroshi Nozaki (Japan) Director of National Museum; Ikuo Hirayama, (Japan) President of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music; Ken Matsumoto (Japan) Head Director of the Institute for Cultural Studies of Ancient Iraq, Kokushikan University; Karoku Miwa (Japan) Director-General, Office of the Planning and Development, Kyusyu National Museum; Akiyoshi Watanabe (Japan) Director of the National Research Institute for Cultural Properties.Veysel Donbaz (Turkey) Director of the Tablet Archive, Istanbul Archaeological Museum; Neil MacGregor (United Kingdom) Director, British Museum; McGuire Gibson (USA) Director, American Archaeological Missions to Nippur and Tell Razuk; Michael Petzet, President of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), Abdelaziz Daoulatli, International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM); Jacques Perot, President of the International Council of Museums (ICOM).